


The Huge Footprints of the Great Brown Bear

by Maidenjedi



Category: Brave (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 06:03:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maidenjedi/pseuds/Maidenjedi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The witch, slightly mad, and her bears, freshly carved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Huge Footprints of the Great Brown Bear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silencedancer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silencedancer/gifts).



She lives in a cottage in the glen, far enough away from the villages that she hears no gossip and close enough to always be the subject of such. Some say she holds captive a woodcarver, though they do not see the carving, only notice the felling, from time to time, of trees. 

She is legend, like the wisps, like the great bears of old. The villagers believe in them all. And all are real, after a fashion, and they all hang 'round the cottage in the glen. Should the wanderer choose, he would open the door or peak in the window and find bears by the thousands, in all sizes and variation. A bear clock, bear plates, a bear mug for ale.

The witch in the cottage sits and she carves and she is curious. She is increasingly frustrated. She cannot stop. She's been awake for hours and here is another bear in her hand, she's lost count for the day. Is it a curse? Another bear. And another. This one of oak, this of mulberry. This one holds an axe. This one is a bear’s face on an axe handle. She carves and she carves and there is no end to the bears.

All the bears.

It’s a curse. Surely.

-

It began on a summer’s eve, hot as any she could recall. She was in the woods. She’s always in the woods, of course, but that day, she was deep and she was lost. Perhaps.

And a bear almost killed her, and she escaped the bear. She lost something to the bear’s clutches and claws and teeth and she mourned, oh, she mourns now. The bear took what was hers. She means to profit from his image. It was something such as that. She wants to be sure. 

How about this for history: they tell a tale, in the villages, of an old woman who lived in a cottage in the glen. She’d been there for a hundred years or more, some said, which of course was nonsense, said others. She was the mother of a fierce warrior, who had long since died, or disappeared, or run off. Killed, some said, by a ferocious black bear. Devoured, said others, by a frightening man-sized brown bear. Or, said still others, run from a bear half his size, the coward.

But there is this: she is a mother, yes, and her son did not grow to carry a bow or a staff or an axe. His wee bones lie in the glen to this day. The first bear she carved bore her son’s name, and she buried it next to him.

There are footprints in the woods, deep and wide. She sees them when she walks, dreams of them at night. In the days after she buried the bear (her son, she thinks, must remember he is there, too, under the grass), she tripped in bears' footprints and sobbed. She came home and used all her firewood for more bears. Eight, eighteen. Eight hundred, before long.

She is, now, a witch. Then, a midwife. The difference being age, and time away from the villagers. They have forgotten she was one of them, because she ceased to be. 

But she will not think on it now, with a freshly-sharpened knife in hand and another bear begging to be let free from the wood. Tall, from a log twice as wide as the witch’s leg. With a sympathizing growl she carves bared teeth on this one.

-

But she’s not a witch. The other, she was the witch, and this is a curse. So the wisps try to tell her, try to trick her into thinking.

“You are,” she says aloud. “A witch. THE witch. This is no curse. This is who you are.”

And she carves, she whittles, and she waits in the woods.

-

The wisps come and they bring….

A bear-child, or so she seems, about the face. The witch sees a bear whether there is one or not, so there might as well be one. The child looks in wonder 'round the cottage, astonished eyes taking in years of work, years of a sad tale told again and again while the shavings fall from branches and bears emerge. 

So many bears.

So many.

Why is it always bears?

Then: work to do, a spell to cast, and somehow, leave the bears to the girl's care and concern. Rid of them, she'll be, thinks the witch.

And yet, still chased. By bears.

**Author's Note:**

> "It would be fitting, I think, if among the last manmade tracks on earth would be found the huge footprints of the great brown bear." - Earl Fleming (American naturalist, 1958)


End file.
